Volunteers are needed to help with the annual DNREC wild turkey productivity survey during July and August.
The public is encouraged to monitor and report wild turkey sightings to provide data to help the Division of Fish and Wildlife sustainably manage the state’s turkey population.
Since the annual wild turkey productivity survey began in 2010, citizen conservationists have helped collect information on turkey populations within the state by generating consistent data on turkey distribution, productivity and sex/age ratios.
The 2020 survey period runs through August. Upon each wild turkey sighting, volunteers are asked to record the date, county, turkey management zone, and number of hens, gobblers and poults. Volunteers are asked to submit their results to the division by Sept. 10, 2020.
Instructions, a data sheet, and a map of turkey management zones are available for volunteers to download.
Also available is the wild turkey identification guide.
The reintroduction of the wild turkey into Delaware over three decades ago, nearly 200 hundred years after it became locally extinct, remains one of Delaware’s greatest wildlife conservation success stories.
After the initial release in 1984 of 34 wild-trapped turkeys into Sussex and Kent counties from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Vermont, division biologists with support from the National Wild Turkey Federation continued turkey reintroductions through the early 2000s.
Once the wild turkey population had established a foothold in Delaware, a hunting season was established in the spring of 1991 that has been a continued annual tradition, with wild turkeys now found in nearly every corner of the state. For more wild turkey information, click here.